Trump Wants Deals (Not Peace) in the Middle East

They aren't even hiding the corruption

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, MARYLAND - MAY 12: U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on May 12, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. President Trump is traveling to Saudi Arabia, the first stop on his four-day Middle East visit and the first international trip of his second term. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Since November, I have been breathing deeply. I have done cardio and yoga every single morning, no excuses. I’ve lifted weights. I’ve stayed hydrated, read more fiction, taken more walks. I’ve prayed more. I’ve started writing poems again. I’ve cut up vegetables and fruit on the weekends so that I’ll eat more nutritiously. This is all to say: I have done the self-care that I can do to nourish my mind, body, and spirit heading into Trump II.

Also? I’ve listened to episodes of Pantsuit Politics from Trump I. I have meditated on the kind of podcast host I want to be this time. I’ve tried to keep my takes restrained, my powder dry. If you can accuse me of anything, it’s dramatically under-reacting to nearly everything that’s taken place since January 20.

Today, I have reached the boil. I didn’t want it to happen so soon, but I have arrived at “are you f***ing kidding me?” I was well into “this is some bad s***” territory already. I was rounding constitutional crisis corner. But the final push into white hot rage? The corruption.

It’s the rampant, transparent, double-dog-dare-you-to-challenge-me, let-all-y’all-eat-cake corruption.

I hope you’ll listen and feel…seen? understood? informed? All of these.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading out for another walk. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• Trump Heads to the Middle East to Make Deals

• Open Corruption in the Trump Administration

• Outside of Politics: Disappearing Southern Accents

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Reimagining Citizenship from Pantsuit Politics

The Trump Administration’s Meme Coins, Emoluments, and Deals

• $Trump Cashes In (Pantsuit Politics Newsletter)

• CT kidnapping unearthed alleged ties to $230M crypto heist (CT Insider)

• Trump says planned gift of luxury plane from Qatar is a very ‘transparent’ deal (The Guardian)

• Elon Musk’s Starlink business could soon tap into $42 billion federal program (CNN)

• Trump ignites ‘insider trading’ accusations after global tariffs U-turn (The Guardian)

• President Trump to Host Dinner With Holders of His Memecoin (Bloomberg)

• Auction to Dine With Trump Creates Foreign Influence Opportunity (The New York Times)

• Trump Heads to the Middle East Focused on Business Deals, Not Diplomacy (The New York Times)

• People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago (Wired)

• What Does Trump Want in the Middle East? (Foreign Affairs)

• House Democrat demands ethics review of Qatari jet gift to Trump (The Hill)

• How Trump’s Crypto Move Will Mine Your Retirement (Lever News)

• LD-203 Contribution Report (Senate.gov)

• Unchecked Exec (Issue One)

• Trump Flying Tonight from White House to Trump Virginia Golf Club for Another Million Dollar-a-Plate Candlelight Dinner SuperPAC Fundraiser (Public Citizen)

• The Golden Oval (Pantsuit Politics Newsletter)

• More to Say on Scams, States, and Witch Hunts (Pantsuit Politics Premium)

The Disappearing Southern Accent

• US population center trending toward South this decade (AP News)

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:10] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:11] And this is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:13] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're talking about Trump's big trip to the Middle East and how he seems more concerned with making money than securing peace in the region. And some of those money-making deals seem designed to benefit him and not the country. Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about Southern accent.

Beth [00:00:32] Before we get started, kicking off our listener drive today, something we haven't done in quite a while, and we have a very special offer as part of this drive. Sarah and I have built Pantsuit Politics from the ground up. We stay close to our roots in everything that we do. We still record our podcasts from closets in our homes in Kentucky. We still work with the same audio engineer, Dylan, who started with us when he graduated from college. Alise, who runs our operations, and Maggie, who focuses on our relationships with listeners, are both listeners turned colleagues. Since 2015, we've been having conversations about politics that we hope make us better people and citizens.

Sarah [00:01:06] So, look, a lot has changed in American politics and podcasting since 2015. And we are able to keep doing what we do because of listener support. That's it. That's the whole kit and caboodle. For two big reasons. First, financially listeners keep our business running. Back in 2017, when we launched our first listener drive, that allowed us to hire Dylan right out of college and release our husbands from producing the show in the evenings after work. That was a great development, not just for Pantsuit Politics, but for our marriages.

Beth [00:01:41] I think it was very important all around, professionally and personally.

Sarah [00:01:45] Very important. In 2019, listener support allowed us to start paying Alise. In 2021, it allowed us to hire Maggie. It's allowed us take Alise and Maggie from part-time to full-time. There simply would not be Pantsuit Politics without our listener's financial support.

Beth [00:02:02] Equally important, our listeners don't just listen—listener is almost the wrong word because you all add to our thinking. You present new arguments. You say, here's what you're missing. You ask us really hard questions. Your input makes everything we do better. And now most of that listener conversation happens in our premium community on Substack.

Sarah [00:02:23] Now, everyone has their own practice on Substack. Some people come just to share their thoughts on the main show in the comment threads there. Some get their news from me every morning on the News Brief. Some come to basically get a low-key law degree from Beth on More to Say. Some come just hear us cuss on Thursdays on the spicy bonus episode. So we've got something for everyone and all for the low, low price of $15 a month. But do we have something very special this summer?

Beth [00:02:52] Beginning June 5th, we are launching a meditation series called Re-imagining Citizenship. For the 30 days leading up to July 4th, a date we did not just pick at random, we're going to share a very short two to five minute meditation every day on what citizenship means here and now in this strange time in American history. We're going to share art that inspires us and what we're grateful for. And it won't just be us. We have some reflections from members of our community, from our entire team, for some special guests that we know you're going to be very excited to hear from. So we hope you'll join us for 30 days of Re-imagining Citizenship. And we have more surprises that we'll tell you about on Friday, but you don't have to wait. The link to subscribe is in the show notes on all of our social media channels, or you can just go to pantsuitpoliticshow.com

Sarah [00:03:41] And this series will only be available to Substack subscribers. So please join us on Substack. We are so excited for this series and the other plans we have for the summer, which again, we'll be telling you about soon. Now, let's talk about Donald Trump's trip to the Middle East. President Trump left yesterday for a four-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. These are deep pocketed monarchies instead of the traditional democratic allies to the United States. And that really sets the tone. That really sets to tone. The countries you visit on your first state visit overseas sets the tone in more ways than one.

Beth [00:04:32] It's also a reminder that while some things about Trump have changed from his first administration to his second, this one hasn't. He prioritized a trip to the Middle East as the first state visit when he was in office the first time, would have again, but for the death of the pope. So he is definitely telling us what matters to him. And it doesn't seem to be foreign policy so much as money.

Sarah [00:04:58] What's so interesting about this trip is this has not been a geopolitical priority for the Trump administration, and really to be fair and transparent, for the Biden administration either. Despite the fact that so much of the world's focus has been on Gaza, despite the fact that right now much of the regional focus is on Iran, this isn't a top priority for The Trump administration. And what I mean by that is solving these conflicts is not a top priority for the Trump administration. Basically, all the reporting about this trip is he's here to make deals. He's here to announce big arms deals and investments. That's why he's going to the richest countries. That's why he is snubbing Israel. He is not, despite being so close, visiting Netanyahu. He's not stopping there despite the fact that he has not delivered the aforementioned piece that he told us all throughout the campaign, he would be able to just walk right in and secure between Israel and Hamas.

Beth [00:06:11] It's really interesting to zoom out for a second and think about the fact that Trump has positioned himself as a truth teller about Iraq. That the Republican party was wrong to get us into war in Iraq. And then going into the Obama administration, we had this sense that we're going to shift away from the Middle East as our national focus. We're going to pivot to Asia. We're thinking about new markets in Asia. We're think about threat posed by China. And so even in terms of trade relationships, all of our focus is going to Asia. The Biden administration did some of that. Vice President Harris spent a good amount of time, especially in Southeast Asia, trying to shore up our alliances there. I thought the growing consensus was that our financial entrenchment in the Middle East steered us very, very wrong. But here we are with one of the same people who made that argument vocally on his way to the presidency, getting us financially re-entrenched in that same part of the world.

Sarah [00:07:22] Yeah, and I think it's most clear with Saudi Arabia. We want money. We want billions of dollars in Saudi investment in the United States, but we also want the Saudi government, which is struggling with lower oil prices, to keep those prices low. We want, we want, but what are we giving? That's my question. And also, if you could normalize relationships with Israel, that'd be great as well. Meanwhile, all of these governments, monarchies, are dealing with a lot of upheaval based on the rage their citizens feel about the truly, truly heinous situation in Gaza right now. I read a piece in the Times of London that was from a columnist that basically was like where are we on this? Where is the Western world on Gaza? Are we all just bored? Have we lost focus? Because it's getting. It's getting worse. Israel has basically announced if we don't have a ceasefire deal by the 15th, when Trump leaves this visit to the Middle East, then they're going to take over Gaza, bomb it into oblivion.

[00:08:40] They've already frozen aid for months; 2 million people are on the brink of starvation. Where these 2 million are going to go as they continue to tighten the screws is not clear to anyone. So it's this powder keg that's absolutely fueling discontent in all these countries. And no one can depend on a word he says with regards to this conflict, with regards to any negotiated deal with Iran, which is looking right now to be closer to the Obama deal he abandoned in his first administration. And so nobody knows if they're coming or going on the deals, on the peace, on the conflicts.

Beth [00:09:23] It's that absence of dependability that I don't know how you fix. I was reading this morning that Mike Huckabee, our ambassador to Israel, has come up with a new plan for aid into Gaza, where the Israeli government will set up several humanitarian outposts and those will be secured by private security firms. They'll be administered by a nonprofit out of Europe. And then private US contractors will keep them secure. And I thought, I should be happy that they're talking about this. I should happy that there is an emphasis on aid. And I guess I am. But there are about 15 components just to that extremely high level overview that make me very uncomfortable because of this administration. And it is just about trust. I have to be honest and say that if I heard a similar proposal from the Biden administration or a Harris administration, I'd probably be a little bit more comfortable with it than I am hearing Mike Huckabee propose it on behalf of the Trump administration.

Sarah [00:10:27] You just see it over and over with this administration's approach to foreign policy. I was a little encouraged by the Wall Street Journal reporting that in front of donors he admitted that some of these problems were a little more difficult to solve than he understood at the time.

Beth [00:10:44] You don't say.

Sarah [00:10:45] You don't say. So I guess that's-- gosh, I'm like begging for crumbs here when I say his acknowledgement of how difficult these problems are. But then he does the same thing with the conflict that everyone knew was going to come to a head between India and Pakistan. We had plenty of time, as we have in the past, to step into the breach and say, uh-uh, don't start this. They let it get to violence. Then he steps in and says, we secured a ceasefire and somehow made it worse. India is furious that he basically equalized both parties through his announcement of a cease-fire deal. So we've alienated another, not just ally, but global power we need to be in relationship with. It's like they just put out fires. There's no strategy. And look, like I said, I want to be clear that this is not a hard turn from the Biden administration, which also did not prioritize the Middle East in any real way. Because I don't know at the end of the day where Americans are on this region of the world.

[00:11:58] I don' know if we're still so cynical and detached because of the forever wars that caused so much destruction, both in the region and within our armed forces. And I think a lot has a lot to do with the distrust of Europe that you hear particularly among the administration that has served during those wars and conflicts. So I don' know what we want from this region of the world. I don't know the most concerning part of ambassador Huckabee, which is hard to say, is like this is the bare minimum of what we should be trying to solve right now is the aid crisis. No one has a vision for what comes next. No one is even white boarding it. No one's even shooting out any ideas except for Trump- Gaza with money raining down and big gold statues of him. That's to me what is so heartbreaking. Not to mention, we're just talking about Gaza. You have Israel encroaching into Syria, which is in a very, very fragile place right now. You have all these aid cuts destabilizing places we need to be stable like Jordan. Like you just pile it on and pile it on and he's going to go over there and talk about a plane. It's so disheartening.

Beth [00:13:39] I think to your point about him just lurching from crisis to crisis, the frustrating thing to me is that all these things are related. The way that we handle the conflict in Ukraine is related to the way that we handle the conflict and Gaza. Our trade tariffs and our practical embargoes are related to all of this and so he's creating these crises. It's like he's taking the global piggy bank and just shattering it, and then coming back and wrapping it in duct tape and being like, didn't I just create the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? And then it turns out that the duct tape is like mortgage to the Saudis. And that's what's so frustrating about this upcoming visit. He's not going to solve any of the problems that we just enumerated. He's going to do these deals, a trillion dollars of investment. And I don't know what that means. And what it means matters a lot. And just the word investment implies that they expect something back. These aren't gifts. This is not a region of the world known for just doling out presents and wanting nothing in return. They like him because he's transactional because they understand that he always wants something. And they understand it because they always want something, too.

Sarah [00:14:52] Well, let's talk about these gifts up next. So the headline, as President Trump makes his way across the region, is that he has announced plans to accept a luxury Boeing 747 jet valued at approximately $400 million from Qatar's royal family to serve temporarily as Air Force One. After the end of his term, it will be transferred to Trump's Presidential Library Foundation. At first, there was quibbling about the cost of the jet. And then Qatar said, we'll just give it to you. We'll just give it to you.

Beth [00:15:36] Just out of the goodness of our heart. A $400 million jet to serve as the primary vehicle for the President of the United States and his top aides. And there are so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to begin. I don't know what parts of the Constitution this president likes.

Sarah [00:15:56] I don't think any of them.

Beth [00:15:58] All you hear is disdain, right? There's disdains for birthright citizenship. There is disdain for free speech. There is distain for due process. They're even talking now about suspending habeas corpus rights so that they don't have to deal with these pesky courts and their deportation crusades. He has never cared at all about the prohibition on emoluments contained in the constitution, but it is there in plain language. And it actually spells out more plainly than the constitution usually does that he cannot do this because it says you can't take things from kings and princes. It just is right there in the document.

Sarah [00:16:39] Well, and that's before you even get to the fact that the Trump organization itself has a project worth $5.5 billion in Qatar. The level of transparency involved with this corruption- two words you don't usually put together. The bare minimum most people try to hide it, and he has not and hasn't from the first day because this is coming on the heels of another auctioning off of the White House involved with his meme coin. He has approximately 200 people who are the largest investors in this meme coin. As of late April, nine people hold more than $100 million worth of this meme coin. So it's a literal piggy bank. Like a literal, here, just give me some money and I'll maybe cut you some deals. And I know you did a big newsletter on this, Beth. There's just a level of corruption, particularly with regards to the cryptocurrency.

Beth [00:17:50] So let's talk about these coins $TRUMP and $MELANIA. They do not represent any value. They are meme coins, which means that their value is in them being talked about. Their value is the virality.

Sarah [00:18:04] I thought when you called it an online beanie baby, it's pretty accurate.

Beth [00:18:09] Yes. A beanie baby. It's a Pokémon card, except without the physicality of those things. Those things are arguably worth more because they are something at least. These are nothing. They are a ledger. I looked at the ledger this morning, actually. You can see where the bidding is, who has these coins and what amounts, except that what you can see are things like, son, three letters, just screen names. The Trump family benefits in a variety of ways from these meme coins. But the biggest one that I think is under discussed is that they have invested so much in cryptocurrency infrastructure, in processing the trading of these coins, that every time the coins are bought and sold, they get a fee. So Trump himself isn't being paid for every one of these coins, but he is taking a cut of the transaction, which means that his interest is in keeping the coin's value going up and down and up and done so there will be more transactions.

[00:19:17] So when it looked like the value of these things was about to crash, because some holders of big amounts were about to be released, so you have to have them for a certain amount of time before you can trade them, right? And people who had a bunch were about to be released where they could start to sell them. That's when they announced this auction. Because if they sold all of them, it would just flood the market with them and everybody's value goes down. But then he says, you want to come to an event with me? The top 25 of you want to have dinner with me? You want a tour of the White House? That is part of this, a tour of the white house.

Sarah [00:19:54] That's my house!

Beth [00:19:57] And then it sets off a lot of activity and they make money on all of that activity.

Sarah [00:20:04] Well, and here's just the part that really makes my head spin around backwards and the bees come out my mouth. This is all very opaque. We're going to have to do a whole other show on the level of financial crime and fraud and theft that's happening with cryptocurrency because it's so hard to trace. I read an incredible piece about this town in Connecticut where these people had gotten kidnapped in the middle of the day. Turns out it was related to their son who was doing all this crypto fraud activity and people wanted to get their hands on the money he'd taken through these frauds. Reading about the people trying to track this, trying to get in front of it, because it's like, even if they take your money, it's not like a bank where they're like, they stole it, give it back. It's just it's too late.

[00:21:06] So we don't have any idea what sort of transactions are happening with regards to the meme coin because it's so opaque, but we know that he likes a transaction. We know that is fundamentally transactional. Again, we do know that GEO Group, a private prison company, they got a $1.2 billion contract from ICE after they contributed $1,25 million to two Trump super PACs. We know that one. We know that Elon, who funded so much of his presidential campaign, has gotten a $42 billion contract from the Commerce Department, a $2.4 billion contract from the Federal Aviation Administration. We know that. We know that the Trump administration is seeking to fast track a permit for Tim Barnard, a major Republican donor. So there is some of this all out in the open. Can you even fathom what's happening that we don't know about?

Beth [00:22:06] Well, and the argument from the White House in general is, one, it's all legal because we say it is. The press secretary is not worth listening to because she just comes out and makes statements like everything we're talking about is perfectly legal. And I assure you the president only has America's interests first. But secondly, the attorney general who used to be a lobbyist for Qatar says that all of this is fine, including the plane because it's not a bribe because Trump isn't promising anything back. There's a quid, but no quo. Okay. And we're supposed to take that on faith as well. That's just true because they promised us it's true. This is the same administration that has put people on planes and sent them to El Salvador because of their sweatshirts and tattoos. And we are supposed to look at them and all of this evidence that is sus at best and just go, "Oh, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's all on the [inaudible]." This is an auction. Tim Kaine said shortly after the election, and I think Rahm Emanuel probably coined this, that Donald Trump was going to turn the White House into eBay. And that is what's happening.

[00:23:21] Twenty five people are getting to buy time with the president. FaceTime with the President of the United States. And the New York Times has traced some of the holders of these meme coins, they are not in the United States. This is an open auction for FaceTime with the president. This comes as there's reporting out about another crypto dust-up because some guy with a big crypto firm saw Trump at an event and pressured him to write a Truth Social post that helped his company. And that made David Sacks mad because he wasn't looped into it. And now this guy fell out of everyone's good graces, but has gotten back into them somehow. This is how this White House works. You're in or you're out. And being in or out is almost entirely about the bottom line for whatever business interests you represent. And he's openly selling the opportunity to get in front of him to make your business interest his priority.

Sarah [00:24:22] Well, and look, if you need to hide who you are, we have the meme coin. But if you're comfortable with people knowing, cool, we have lots of opportunities for that as well. Despite the fact that this man cannot run for the presidency again, the Make America Great Again Super PAC has been auctioning off time with him. A million dollars apiece to secure a spot at one of these candlelight fundraising dinners at his properties. Or five million can secure you a one-on-one meeting with Trump. The hottest ticket, that's how they're being described to the business world. Just pay money, pay lots and lots of money, and you can get in front of the president of the United States who is notorious for just doing whatever the last person he talked to thinks is a good idea. Be it Laura Loomer, be it this gentleman who got in front of him and Susie Wiles after pissing everybody off. Like it's just wild.

[00:25:19] Of course, there is no strategic approach to global politics and foreign policy as we discussed before the break, because the only strategy is how to make the absolute most money. I was reading Foreign Affairs and they talked about this administration's approach to all these global conflicts and they were like, well, they're not going to get very far because they're understaffed. And I was like, wait, what? But of course it's poor Steve going to every single table. Like they're not putting any effort into it, any energy into anything except for making him as much money as humanly possible. We've gotten, what, 45 minutes into this episode, and we haven't even talked about how he used the front lawn as a Tesla dealership.

Beth [00:26:10] Well, understaffed-- the national security advisor and the secretary of state are the same person. And that person is also the acting archivist and something else that I can't even remember sitting here right now. Marco Rubio has four jobs. So clearly foreign policy is not the priority. It's just not the property. About the plane, I want to commend representative Richie Torres, who has written a letter calling for an investigation and insisting that Congress approve this transaction. Because that's right, that's the way you don't have an emolument. Okay, if you're going to accept a gift that's a really big gift that raises 400 billion red flags, you come to Congress and ask Congress to approve the deal. And that's what Trump threw a fit about on Truth Social and called Democrats losers. Because anybody could pay for a plane. I got one for free. And that's how people see it. But honestly, if your child was in the military in a foreign nation or worked in our intelligence services, would you be comfortable with the president flying around the world in a plane that was gifted to him by a foreign national? Even if it was one of the friendliest nations in the world to us? Would you feel that that plane is really secure in every way for the kind of information that's being discussed here? There's just a world of security concern, let alone the open bribery that it seems to represent.

Sarah [00:27:43] I certainly hope that Americans do have a problem with this.

Beth [00:27:47] I do, too.

Sarah [00:27:48] Because, look, how many times in your life have you run up against people's fierce independence and refusal to accept money or a gift, even when they really need it? In my life, quite a bit. When somebody says, "Here, can I just give this to you?” people really don't like it. People are like, no, no. We're fiercely independent. There's no independence when you're accepting a flying palace from a country that is really, really caught up in the negotiations between Israel and Gaza, that has a massive investment in whatever happens with Iran and Syria. There's no neutrality here. Do we want to be neutral? I don't understand.

Beth [00:28:37] And he wants the plane because it's aggravated that Air Force One's getting a little old. That the two planes that constitute Air Force One right now are from 1990 and that really bothers him. You know what really bothers me? Having to wonder if it is safe to fly at all. Making sure that under no circumstances do I take a flight in or out of Newark right now. If he takes this plane, when our transportation is a chaotic mess and his tariffs start to show up at Target and Walmart and grocery stores throughout the United States; if there are empty shelves and he gets a flying palace from Qatar at the same time, what are we doing? What are we doing?

Sarah [00:29:26] Yeah, it's getting real Marie Antoinette up in here. We're gilding the Oval Office, literally gilded it in gold, while we're simultaneously telling people they can do with less. You don't need $20; $2 is plenty. And I don't think it's if, it's when the shelves start to empty. The LA port is sitting at 30% lower imports. That's a steeper decline than during the 2008 recession. It's about to get real. And all he's doing is cash and checks for himself. And I have got to believe-- I mean, his approval ratings are just steadily dropping because it's giving let them eat cake.

Beth [00:30:16] And despite the capture of the Federal Justice Department by this president, that ProPublica and Letitia James have people working night and day to figure out who is making money off the tariffs are on, the tariffs are off, the tariffs up, the tariff are down. Because someone is making off of this just senseless manipulation of the market.

Sarah [00:30:42] He bragged about it in the Oval Office. "We made so and so billion dollars after I announced it." Marjorie Taylor Greene was out there trading stocks in the midst of all this up and down.

Beth [00:30:50] And someone is going to expose that eventually, too. I've heard people say about this administration that if Vladimir Putin designed it, he couldn't have executed it so perfectly to benefit Russia's interests. It also is well into feeling like someone has conducted an experiment designed to maximize income inequality. Even the meme coin, over 700,000 people have purchased that coin. The percentage of people who've made money off of it is tiny, those are his supporters. Liberals are not out buying--

Sarah [00:31:30] I didn't buy any Trump or Melania coin. I can assure you that.

Beth [00:31:34] No. Those are his folks losing money on these propositions that are just like gambling. It's just like his casinos. The house wins this stuff. And he is the house around these meme coins because of that crypto infrastructure.

Sarah [00:31:47] Well, he's like the double house. He's like to house and the gambling commission, right? Because he's benefiting and he's also simultaneously supposed to be regulating this industry. Hello?

Beth [00:32:02] It's like you can't even take the metaphor far enough. He's the house and the gambling commission and the weather and the card maker and all the things. There's not a hat that he's not wearing in this scenario.

Sarah [00:32:13] And he's just dialing back; he's firing inspector generals. He's certainly not becoming more aggressive with this crypto stuff. And more and more people are losing their life savings on these scams. And where is he? Where is the United States government? Where is The Justice Department or the FBI as more and people are getting defrauded? It's out of control. I hadn't even really thought about it till you did that More to Say on the scams because it's just where all the lobster in the pot slowly being boiled. It's all the time. It's a text message every two hours. It's constant harassment in every space that people are trying to get in front of you and make a connection and get access to your money and get to access to ripping you off. And it's awful. It's awful!

Beth [00:32:59] And with all of that pressure, just that pressure, not even Iran and a nuclear weapon or the horrifying abdication of dignity and humanity in Gaza. The fact that there are still hostages being held, all of that pressure aside, his time is going to be spent with donors at these events of the century, the hottest ticket in town. And don't worry because an administration official told a news outlet that he's doing that stuff on his personal time. I found that to be one of the most galling statements in any of this. He's doing them on his own personal time And, look, I understand that presidents can't be presidenting 24 hours every day, but the idea that he has personal time to do this kind of event when federal employees are being fired-- you know what, even despite that, just in general, I don't think a president should have that much personal time. I really don't. I think his PTO ought to be pretty low for the four years that he does this job.

Sarah [00:34:07] It just feels like everything really is reaching a boiling point. Between the crypto corruption, the meme coins, the plane, the contracts for his cronies and donors, the candlelight dinners, all of this, you just put that, you make a big golden statue of Trump out of all that. And that's a very heavy statue resting on a very weak foundation of continuing conflict in Ukraine and Russia that he said he was going to fix. Continuing conflict between Gaza and Israel, including just horrific images of children starving to death. You put that on top of India and Pakistan. Let's not even get domestically. Medicaid cuts, which we're going to talk about on Friday. We've got a drop dead date on funding the government coming up in August. We have him just indiscriminately cutting everything. Foreign aid, whole entire sections of administrative departments, NPR, PBS, Big Bird, FEMA, you name it, all of that. And then, entering from stage left is increasing inflation, increasing unemployment, and what I strongly anticipate coming, which is empty shelves. And not to mention just the strain people feel from trying to sort all that out. So this is a really weak foundation that we're putting a big giant golden statue on top of.

Beth [00:35:58] Can I just say to you, if you're new here, this is not the kind of episode that we like to make. We have worked so hard to not do he sucks everything is awful. We have bent over backwards to not to do he sucks, everything is awful. This is just undeniable at this point. We've given it time. We've been patient. We've hoped for the best. Because I always, and I know you do too, Sarah, am for America; and if America gets a better result and I was wrong in my predictions, I am thrilled. But this is just reaching a level where from every corner, all you see is a person who is enriching himself at the public expense. Enriching himself in dollars, enriching himself in power, enriching himself in fame and privilege and does not care at all what it costs. And that cost is getting steeper and steeper and steep and it's going to. Until Congress decides that they want to wake up and care about this, the courts cannot shoulder this alone. We do not have laws and a system sufficient to protect us from absolute shamelessness. We don't. We cannot protect against this. Congress is going to have to step up and exercise as much oversight and control and pushback as it can muster. And that's going to have to come from the public. That's a reason that we have to catalog this stuff because we all do need to press our representatives. We need to tell them this is unacceptable because until Congress grows a spine, this is where we're living for the next four years.

Sarah [00:37:41] Well, you know what, I don't feel bad about any of this. This isn't about me just hating him. This is about him not meeting the expectations that he clearly articulated over the course of his campaign. It was going to be the greatest economy the world has ever known. Prices were going to drop immediately. The second he was elected, he didn't even have to get sworn in yet, he was going to bring peace across the world through strength. Although, now he says everybody knew he was kidding. Didn't sound like he was kidding to me at the time. Sounded like he was dead serious because he was definitely crowing about the small successes he had like with the first phase of ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, which everyone knew was not going to last but clearly he didn't get to work making sure it lasted because it fell apart exactly as predicted by every expert on the stage. So I'm just trying to hold you to account for what you promised. That's it. I'm not inventing new things. I'm saying this is what you said you were going to do and it's not happening. The only thing I see is you getting richer and richer and richer.

Beth [00:38:42] And again, it taints everyone who props him up. There's a lot that's happened in this administration that mirrors what was proposed in project 2025. I'll tell you that project 2025 didn't talk about meme coins. It didn't say raid the United States for your personal benefit. It didn’t say accept planes from the government of Qatar. But a whole coalition of people who have said, well, he's imperfect, but he's our imperfect guy and so we're going to ride this momentum forward, just get dragged down by it. And it's so predictable. And here we are again, and it makes me sick. And not even here we again, we're in deeper every time because there's nothing that stays the same. You are in decline or you are making progress. And this is decline at an accelerated pace.

Sarah [00:39:32] And I'm just worried because we do have a long time before the end of the term. We have less time before the midterms and really, truly the time for Republicans to turn this around, particularly economically. The deadline is basically when these empty shelves are going to start hitting. So it feels like the midterms are far away, but the midterm election season is actually not. And so I am desperately hoping that the pressure, which we all know will increase in the summer just because it's also hot and people start getting real cranky.

Beth [00:40:11] And we're running up against the debt ceiling. There's just so many that like we're only contracting right now.

Sarah [00:40:17] Yes. So I am hopeful that that will finally force Congress's hand. It's going to force the American people's hand and I think you're going to start getting a steady stream of rage coming his way and we'll see how he responds. Beth, when I lived in Washington, D.C., someone said to me, "Oh, you're losing your accent." And I said, "Well, it's time to move." I value my accent deeply even though I actually can't really hear it. I know it's there like the Holy Spirit. And I was very upset to read this report that Southern accents are fading. There's this big study they looked at the accents of black Atlantans, working class white people in New Orleans, and people who grew up in Raleigh. And they sort of traced why the distinct accents in each of these three places have been fading. And I thought it was so interesting.

Beth [00:41:32] Most interesting part to me is that the people who are studying this don't think it's mass media. That's what I would have thought. Well, TV, radio, podcasts, but that's not what they think is happening.

Sarah [00:41:48] That actually doesn't surprise me because the decentralized nature of our media means that so many people get their entertainment from places like TikTok and short form video. And I feel like short form video actually gives a real boost to people with southern accents. Maybe that's just the algorithm sending me what I want to listen to, but I hear some deep accents on Instagram from some of my favorite followers. We've had Trae Crowder on our show. He's got a hell of an accent. I love his accent. So it doesn't surprise me. What surprised me is that it's an influx of new people into the South. This statistic got me. More than 5.8 million people have moved into the U.S. South so far in the 2020s. More than four times the combined total of the nation's three other regions. We are so popular.

Beth [00:42:40] Well, it's also interesting because I remember a few years ago, a lot of conversation we talked about it on the show that Americans weren't moving around enough. That we used to be a people that relocated really frequently for work and for other reasons, and that it kind of stopped. But now you see article after article about people moving to the South because it's more affordable here, because it is warmer for a variety of reasons.

Sarah [00:43:03] That's what did it in Raleigh. They built the research triangle. All these influx of people to the research triangle killed the accent. In Atlanta, they call it the reverse great migration that so many black Americans moved back down to the South. And then in New Orleans, it was Hurricane Katrina. They called it a catastrophic language change when so many people left. A quarter million residents in the first year after the storm left the area. And that makes sense to me because I feel like my accent, my region, I hear very strong accent still where I live because we don't have a massive influx or outflux. Like our population has stayed the same, so it makes sense to me that our regional accent is a little bit protected.

Beth [00:43:45] And I could see mine flattening out when I went to college in Lexington and then I moved to Northern Kentucky and it's just kind of flattened and flattened and flattened. So my personal migration has worn away some of the edges of the accent that I used to have. My Western Kentucky was different than your Western Kentucky. There's a lot of miles in the Western part of the state. But when I'm with my parents, I can hear a really strong accent now. And I shouldn't be able to hear it because it's what I grew up with.

Sarah [00:44:14] Well, Nicholas and I were talking about it. He said what makes him the saddest is the loss of some of the North Atlantic accents. Like his grandmother's group in Philadelphia. Baltimore used to have a distinct accent. That does make me sad. I thought those accents like "wooder" that is totally faded. And this article talks about what's replacing the accents everywhere is a dialect from California. Which listen, I love California. I consider myself like 25% California, but I don't know if that's the one I want to go around the world. I'm just going to be honest. I'm not looking for "what are you doing?" from the SNL sketch being everybody's regional dialect.

Beth [00:44:59] I think that in general, anything distinctive is precious. I don't like driving around the United States and seeing strip malls that look like they could be anywhere. You kind of want to be in a place and think this is this place's thing. I was just telling people at my church over the weekend about-- I can't remember if it was Nebraska or Iowa, but you and I were somewhere speaking and everyone we talked to gave us cardinal directions. They were like, "Well, you're going to come out of here and go east and then you're going to go north for about a mile and you'll be there." Or even in the buildings, they'd be like, "You're going to come in the West entrance." And I remember saying to someone, "Does everyone here walk around with a compass? What is happening? I have no idea what's East from where I'm standing right now." And they were like, "Oh, really? I didn't even know that we did that." But they do it, and it was so charming because it was really distinctive. And I think that's what makes me sad about the accents. Even my own, I wish that I still had more of a tether to that place that I came from. Now, I do when I'm really tired or really mad or I've had too much to drink, but those are the circumstances.

Sarah [00:46:03] I love my accent. I love my kid's accent. And recently I've been getting a lot more compliments on it. It's been really interesting. That's not a thing I ever heard growing up. “Oh my God, I love your accent.” Like that was not a thing. But more and more recently, I don't know if I have Parker Posey to thank for this, but I have been hearing a lot more I love your accent. It's so special. And I do. I love my accent. I love speaking distinctly because of this area of the world that I love so much. I am thankful that Europeans probably can't distinguish my accent from a Canadian accent. And I plan on telling everyone I'm Canadian when I'm in Europe this summer, but otherwise, I really do love it. Well, thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Thanks y'all. We'll just throw in a little y'all there for emphasis as a conclusion to our conversation about accents.

[00:46:53] Again, we would love to have you on Substack. We are so excited for this series, Re-imagining Citizenship. We're pouring our hearts into these 30 days of reflections. I've had to re-record a couple because I started crying. It's fine. It's going to be so good. Because here's the thing, guys, our tanks are running a little low. See the previous two segments of the show where we were really deep in rage. So we're trying to balance that out a little bit. We would really love to have you. It'll be a subscriber only series. So the link to subscribe is in the show notes. You can check it all out. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.